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THE 



CASE 



OP 



THE BATTALION STATED, 



WITH 



AN EXPOSITION 



OP THE 



GROUNDS UPON WHICH CHAS, LEE JONES, ESQ,, 



EXPECTED TO HAVE HAD THE COMMAND OF THE BATTALION (CONSIST- 
ING OF THREE COMPANIES RAISED BY HIMSELF IN THE DISTRICT 
OF COLUMBIA, AND TWO TO BE RAISED IN MARYLAND,) 
CONFERRED UPON HIM, AS OF RIGHT AND JUSTICE 
DUE BOTH TO HIM AND TO THE OFFICERS 
AND MEN WHO HAD VOLUNTEERED 
TO SERVE UNDER HIS COMMAND 



AS LIEUTENANT COLONEL 



WALTER JONES 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY J. & G. S, GIDEON. 

1847. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 



The correspondence and the corroborative documents, contained in these 
sheets, are printed for the single purpose of communicating to those 
persons who may take any interest in the reputation or affairs of my son, or 
myself, more exact information than could be conveyed in any other way, 
of the circumstances of a recent transaction of which the principal features 
are of extensive notoriety. It has already attracted a large share of public 
attention and curiosity; and has elicited a diffusive feeling in the commu- 
nity, which gives cheering assurance of the number, (he weight, and the 
influence of the men who yet remain fearless, ingenuous, and enlightened 
enough to disenthral their moral sense of party-biasses, and to think right 
and speak out, when unconscientious power would dominate over evident 
and known justice to a fellow citizen. 

My peculiar relations to the transaction, and to the parties, necessarily 
called me to the duty of vindicating the reputation of my son, and the rights 
of more than two hundred of his fellow-citizens and comrades, who had 
volunteered under his banner, against indignity and insult, added to positive 
injustice, from hands armed with powers and wielding influences far more 
potent of evil, when operating for evil intents, than of good, when under 
the wisest and most benevolent direction. Conscious, as I was, of being 
myself the real mark aimed at by the archers, yet, had 1 alone been exposed 
to their shafts, I should have continued in my accustomed silence and con- 
tempt of the animosity which has occasionally been manifested towards me 
by men in power; but never manifested with so much of low-minded spite 
and mean artifice, as in the rare occasions when pride of place and poverty 
of soul have been found strangely contrasted in the same person. But 
neither neutrality nor inactivity was compatible with such impulses as I 
have been accustomed to obey, when the shafts, of which I was to be made 
the butt, were contrived to pass on to their destined mark, through the sides 
of one designed to be wounded more on my account than his own ; and 
whose slightest wound must prove deeper and more painful to me, than the 
deepest that the utmost malice of any earthly power could jnflict directly 
and exclusively on myself. 

For the readier comprehension of the conclusions justly deducible from 
the more material and indisputable of the facts and circumstances detailed 
in the annexed documents, I will now preface their introduction with a 
summary, indicating (he points of view from which the violated rights of 
individuals on the one side, and the ignoble spite and vulgar insolence of 
power on the other, appear most conspicuous. 

My son had presented, in November last, proposals for raising a volunteer 
battalion to serve in Mexico during the war. These proposals had been, 
several times in the succeeding four months, renewed and brought under 
the President's consideration, with some difference in form, and under some 
changes of circumstances. The recommendations, by which his proposals 
were backed, were most unequivocal in their terms, and from the highest 



and most trustworthy sources; indeed the saiisfactory tenor of the evidence 
given of his fitness to undertake the task proposed by him was implicitly 
admitted. But the constant answer given to his proposals was the fixed de- 
termination of the Executive to rely exclusively on the additions, authorized 
by Congress, to the regular regiments, and to decline any addition whatever 
to the volunteer force. This determination was announced to him for the 
last time, about the middle of March last; upon which he made up his 
mind to give up all thoughts of his plan as then hopeless. But in the course 
of a few weeks afterwards, he learned from the Adjutant General that the 
long-standing determination of the Executive on this point had yielded to the 
force of circumstances, and that requisitions for a considerable number of 
volunteers were to be immediately made; and among others, for a battalion 
composed principally of volunteers fiom this District. 

From the tenor of this communication, my son clearly understood that 
the President had at last concluded to give him an opportunity to raise the 
battalion which he had so often proposed; in short, that an authorized over- 
ture was made to him to go on and raise the three district companies, with 
a view to the ultimate command of the battalion, with the rank of Lieut. 
Colonel. 

Since I sent in my letter to the Secretary of War, on the 21st inst., I 
have endeavored to ascertain, from the most authentic sources accessible to 
me, the ground upon which the President's conduct in this matter was to 
be explained and justified; and, so far as the talk of such of his apologists 
as are supposed either to belong to, or to have intimate intercourse with, 
what are called ministerial circles, may be relied on, I learn that they 
mean to plant themselves at the ihreshhold, and to deny that the President 
ever did promise, or authorize the Adjutant General to promise, the com- 
mand of the battalion to my son; or in any way to " coinmW'' the Presi- 
dent on that subject. What meaning, precisely, these gentlemen annex to 
the term '' promise," or '• commit," I know not. What precisely was the 
language used by the President when he communicated his views of the 
battalion, I know not. Both the President and the Adjutant General have 
been for some time absent, and I purposely abstained from seeking any 
disclosure on the subject from the Adjutant General, before his departure to 
the North. It may possibly turn out, for aught I know, that there was 
some egregious misunderstanding somewhere — either by the Adjutant Gen- 
eral of the President's meaning, or by my son of the Adjutant General's. 

That is a question, however, which I do not hold to be necessarily es- 
sential either to the moral merits of the President's conduct, or to the just 
claims of my son lo the command. There arc other facts and ciicumstan- 
ces palpable, notorious, undisputed and indisputable, which of themselves 
created a duty to give him the cornmand,'even more imperative than a nak- 
ed promise, however explicit or positive; and which imbued the act of 
giving it to Capt. H., at the time and under the circumstances of the per- 
petration of that act, with deeper and more odious stains than are common- 
ly found on open breaches of express and solemn promises. 

It was matter of the utmost notoriety, and distinctly known to the Gov- 
ernment and to the whole community, that my son had put himself before 
the public in the assumed character and quality of designated command- 



ant of the battalion, and under the clearest impression and most unquali- 
fied belief of his having the sanction of the Government for so doing; that 
he was openly and actively exercising the functions incident to the station 
which he supposed himself authorized to assume; publicly inviting volun- 
teers to his banner; earnestly devoting his energies and resources to the ac- 
complishment of the object; and incurring vast sacrifices of time, labor, and 
means — all upon the undoubting faith of a sufficient warrant from compe- 
tent authority, as he understood it. The truth of all this, to the minutest 
tittle, wns so notorious, tiiat it would be difficult to find a man in the whole 
community to express a doubt of it, without blushing, conscious of his own 
insincerity. The name and the agency of the commandant of the bat- 
talion were identified with every one of the public and notorious steps taken 
towards its organization. 'Twas impossible for any indifferent person to 
take cognizance of the one, wiihout having the other pressed upon his no- 
tice: far less could^ it escape the distinct cognizance of the officers of the 
Government, directly interested both in the means and in the results. 

As to the distinct and emphatic notice to the Government of these pro- 
ceedings under its very nose — how many individuals arc there to be found 
in this community who may not be said to kn(W^ what is so notorious? 

The public notices from my son and the captains selected and engaged 
by him to raise the companies, all proclaimed him the commandant of the 
battalion. The earliest newspaper notices of the battalion both in Balti- 
more and in this city, (some of them preceding the oflBcial announcement 
of it) all named the same commandant. More particular references may 
be made, for these notices, to the two leading papers in this city — the Intel- 
ligencer and the Union; namely, an editorial article in the Intelligencer, so 
early as the 27th April, and an article in the Union of the 7th May, re- 
published from the Baltimore Clipper; both referring to the name and per- 
son of the commandant, as if it were a matter perfectly understood and 
undoubted. Considering the habitual and well known caution of the 
Union as to unauthenticated reports of Executive appointments, and its 
vigilance in correcting erroneous reports of such appointments in other pa- 
pers, we need no stronger proof of the unqualified notoriety and accep- 
tance of the general understanding on the subject, than the quotation of it, 
without censure, in that paper. 

But 'tis useless to be citing particular evidences of a fact to which we may 
find competent witnesses at every turn in the streets of Washington or 
Baltimore. Still, I must refer to some conspicuous instances, in which 
distinct and unequivocal notice and knowledge that my son had stood for- 
ward in the capacity of commandant, and was practically exercising the 
functions of (hat station, under asserted authority from Government, and 
even official recognitions of that authority, are brought under the very roof 
of the War Department. 

An officer of high rank, stationed in this city, went to the War Depart- 
ment for the purpose of obtaining the appointment of Adjutant to the bat- 
talion for some young gentleman; but, not finding the Secretary, he wai 
advised by one of the staff" officers attached to the Department, to apply to 
-Col. Jones, which he accordingly did. 

Other and more unequivocal recognitions in official forms of my son'a au- 



thority and agency in the business, are to be found among the annexed 
documents; all showing how diffusive and imphcit was the understanding 
of his being designated to the command of the battahon, and how notorious 
the fact that he so considered himself, and was openly acting in that capacity 
within the very walls of the Departments.* 

Then in what conceivable case could any party be more absolutely bound 
than was the Government in this, to make prompt, instantaneous, and une- 
quivocal disavowal of the authority under which he assumed to be acting, 
if that authority were indeed usurped, or by any means unduly or erron- 
eously assumed J unless the Government, seeing that it had gone so far, had 
determined to waive all original exceptions to thq authority, and to adopt 
and confirm it. 

But so far from any sort of disavowal going to repel the necessary infer- 
ences and tbe universally recognised consequences from silent acquiescence 
in the authority thus exercised under the eye and within the immediate 
cognizance of the Government, it was confirmed by as direct, unequivocal, 
and binding acts of confirmation as human ingenuity could have devised; 
that is, by the unconditional adoption of the acts performed under color of 
it, and by the acceptance and appropriation of ihe fruits resulting from the 
exercise of it. 

The public invitations for volunteers to come in and join the companies, 
all referred to ihe Lt. Colonel under whom they were to serve ; that was a 
material term well imderstood in all the primary enrolments with their re- 
spective captains. The companies were in fact raised by his personal exer- 
tions, influence, and means; and when they came forward to be nmstered 
into the service of the United Stales, they came under his conduct and 
guidance, and were produced and offered as volunteers musteiing into ser- 
vice under him as commandant of the battalion. By that title, and upon 
those terms alone, the Government originally acquired its only claim to their 
services; by that title and upon those terms alone it accepted their services; 
and by no other do6s it hold them to service at this day. No change what- 
ever in the terms or conditions of their enrolment was proposed, when the 
companies were organized and their officers were elected and commissioned. 
The terms and conditions have been bluntly and despotically violated, but 
no otherwise rescinded or disavowed. I know not even that the official 
muster-roUs , as originally framed by the mustering officers who were order- 
ed to the duty of inspecting the men and mustering thetn into service, have 
been yet altered from their original form, in which they purported to be 
muster-rolis of companies"in the Battalion of volunteers, commundedby 
Lieut. Colo7t.el Charles Lee Jo7ies,^' (fccf 

Then what signifies it now, disavowing all intention on the part of Gov- 
ernment originally to confer the authority, or babbling of misapprehension 
and mistake on the part of this person or of that, in supposing that an 
overture had been made to my son from competent authority, to go on 
and fulfil the proposals, (under some slight modifications,) which he had so 
"lately pressed upon the consideration of the Government, for raising a vol- 
' ijnleer battalion? The common law holds men bound, in the ordinary 
transactions of life, by acts performed for their benefit under an aulhoriiy 

♦ See appendix, No. 8 and 9. f See appendix, No. 8. 



which, void as it may have been originally, has received subsequent assent 
and confirmation far less distinctly and unequivocally pronounced than such 
as appear in this case; and it moreover holds any attempt afterwards to get 
rid of responsibility on the objection of an original defect in the authority, a 
palpable and opprobrious fraud. In so holding, the common law follows, 
without the shghtest deviation, the footsteps of the moral law, and of uni- 
Tersal equity. 

But somewhat of a new face (whether a fairer or honester face, I leave 
to all impartial judgments) has been put upon the transaction by unques- 
tionable information communicated to me in a few days after my letter of the 
8th June to the Secretary of War. 

The President, by way of explaining and justifying his conduct in the 
affair to several of the volunteer officers, whose most earnest and determined 
wishes he knew had been disappointed by the sudden and to them astoun- 
ding announcement, on the 8th June, of Capt. H's appointment to the 
command of the battalion, emphatically declared that he had never thought, 
for a moment, of appointing Mr. Jones, and could not, under any circum- 
stances, be induced to appoint him; and that the appointment had been, 
from the beginning , intended for another. I learned from Capt. Hughes 
that the appointment had been offered to him immediately after his return 
from Mexico in the spring; that some time afterwards, when returning to 
the seat of Government from a visit to his family, he received, by the way, 
information apparently so credible of the appointment having been given to 
Mr. Jones, that he presumed the first intention of assigning the command 
to him had been abandoned; at which he was rather pleased, as he by no 
means desired the command, and would rather have declined it, but that 
he conceived it not proper, under his official relations to the Government, 
to decline any duty which it might think proper to assign him; but, on his 
arrival in Washington on the same day, the offer was renewed to him, and 
of course accepted . But 1 soon afterwards learned , from information equally 
credible, another fact that seems to throw all this into sore confusion. In 
the midst of my son's most active operations about raising the battalion, a 
person, understood to be living inclose intimacy with the President, and 
holding some confidential situation about his person, perhaps that of assist- 
ant secretary, was going about apparently collecting information and opin- 
ions as to who might be considered the most eligible person in the District 
to take command of the battalion. One gentleman, of whom the inquiry 
was made, answered by asking, "who but Col. Jones;" to which the reply 
■was, "oh — he won't do." 

These apparently Janus-faced indications of the secret intents harbored 
in the Executive breast, all concur in asserting, and, wonderful to say, a.s- 
serting by way of apology or defence of Executive motives and conduct, — 
apre-determined, fixed, and unalterable ea:c/w5?on of my son from the com,- 
fnitnd; whilst the appointment of another in his place vacillated, for a short 
time, between Capt. H. and some citizen of the District: a vacillation pro- 
bably produced by this; that the original scheme of the battalion , as offi- 
dally given out, called for a Lt. Colonel from the District; and the mo- 
tnentary hesitation may have arisen from the double violence done to the 
lermsof the enrolnaentj first, by denying to the volunteers the particular 



commandant under whom alone they had volunteered to serve ; and, 
secondly, by forcing upon them, against the whole current of their predilec- 
tions and feelings, a commandant, not from the District, but from , to Mew, 
the most odious of all places, the army. But the ridiculous prudery of 
being scrupulous about swallowing any particular piece of the hog, and 
unscrupulous about the rest, was at last discarded, and they swallowed him 
to the very tail. 

Now, how does all this affect the moral of the question? They lie by, 
and see a gentleman zealously exerting himself, and bestowing vast labor and 
expense in accomplishing an object greatly desired by them, in raising this 
battalion of volunteers ; they know he is doing so wilh the understanding 
and belief that, if successful, he is to earn the command by meritorious ser- 
vice, and to receive it as justly earned; but, all this time, they have inex- 
orably predetermined to refuse him theexpecled reward afier he has earned 
it, and have pre-arranged to bestow it on another. With this piedetermina- 
tion and this pre-arrnngement fixed in their own minds, they let him go on 
and perform the service for them, without a whisper or a breaih giving him 
the slightest intimation either of his own predetermined exclusion, or of the 
pre-arranged appointment of another. Not only is there this subdolous si- 
lence on these foregone conclusions, but they are studiously concealed and 
dissembled from the volunteer officers on the very day preceding the an- 
nouncement of Capt. H's appointment; and concealed and dissembled with 
such exquisite address that they left the Presidential Mansion on that day, 
fully persuaded that their own predetermined choice of a commandant was 
to be gratified; whereby the shock, produced by a contrary announcement 
on the next day, was so much the more stunning.* 

The answer, (true or untrue,) to all this is still — no express promise — no 
bond in the case; as if silence itself were not always vocal to the ear of jus- 
tice, whenever conscience and good faith required it to speak out; and as if 
falsehood and deception could never be acted, but must necessarily be 
spoken . 

True, we had received from the Secretary of War some earlier warning 
of the absence of that herculean bond — an express promise; a warning, 
however, which, in its terms, approached not, wiihin millions of degrees, 
the appalling confession now so broadly spread out, that there had been all 
along harbored in the secret breast of the President a predetermined design 
and purpose to exclude my son from the command; whilst he was to be per- 
mitted still to go on , wiihout the slightest warning of such a design , lo expend 
his energies and resources in raising the battalion, under the belief that, in 
so doing, he was to earn and receive the command of it. On the contrary, 
the warning, surprising, inexplicable, and suspicious as it was at that tin)e, 
was perfectly consistent with ultimate justice to my son; it imported simply 
that neither the President nor Secretary of War had e\er promised him ihe 
commaad: that the President was 7iot committed to any one on the subject 
of the command; [N. B., not even lo Capt. H.;] that no appointment 
would be made till the companies were all organized; [N. B., it had, as it 
now seems, been already /jromiseo? to Capt. H., and was actually given to 
him on the 8th June, whilst both the Maryland companies and one of the 

• See my letter to the Secretary of War, page 25. 



District companies remained unorganized;] that there might, or might not, 
be difficulties in the way; the officers and men might object, «fcc. 

At the time this warnmg was uttered, my son, be it remembered, had 
been at least three weeks strenuously and unremittingly employed in rais- 
ing the companies, and had more than one hundred volunteers enrolled. 
Extensive, ramified , and costly arrangements had been made, and were in 
active progress, for raising the residue. Strange and suspicious as this 
warning appeared under existing circumstances, he had no fear of fulfil- 
ling all the conditions necessary to entitle him in justice to the command. 
Lei us see what were the conditions established by all precedent usage and 
practice to entitle him to the command. 1. Election by the volunteers 
themselves. This was a chance, well understood from the beginning, as 
one necessary to be met; and had he expended millions in raising the bat- 
talion, he would, witjiout hesitation, have renounced the command without 
such election; and would have disdained to touch it, if forced upon ihe vol- 
unteers by Executive favoritism on the one side, and despotism on the 
other. As far as things had already gone, he had one very conclusive war- 
rant of election — the voluntary enrolment and mustering m of the men. 
under his command by name; and the first thing done by each company, 
as it was organized, was to give him the unanimous vote of officers and 
men; and v;hen the announcement of Capt. H's appointment came upon, 
them by surprise, before the third District company was organized, the men 
of that company immediately recorded their unanimous vote, protesting 
against Capt. H's appointment, and calling for that of tlieir original choice.* 
Indeed, it seems quite clear, that the particular time (8ih June) chosen for 
the announcement of Capt. H's appoint ment, was selected with a view to an- 
ticipate and defeat elections by the companies; it was after two of the District 
companies had been raised and organized , and shut up in Fort McHenry , and 
the third wanted but a small number of men to make up its complement. 
Hence, doubtless, the anger that swelled the Presidential bosom at the presen- 
tation of the petition and remonstrance of this last company.! 2. The merit 
of having raised, or principally contributed to the raising of any battalion, 
corps, or regiment, has always, according to all precedent usage and practice, 
(a sort of common law for volunteers,) been a prevailing title to the command, 
in the absence of very grave objections to character and competency; always 
subject, however, to that paramount rule in the comrr.on law of volunteering, 
acceptance by the volunteers themselves. This particular title of merit was as 
strongly presented in my son's case as it was possible to be in any case, and 
far more strongly, perhaps, than in any preceding case wherein it had been 
held irresistible: for the fact is not only notorious in itself, but directly certi- 
fied by unquestionable documents, that every man in the three District 
companies had been raised in his name, and by his energy, influence, and 
means.J The positive merit in this case is enhanced by comparison: for 
at the time when my son had raised and organized two companies, and 
brought a third to the eve of organization in tliis District, there was scarca 
a third of the two Maryland companies raised and mustered in; and there 

* See Appendix, No. 10, 11, 12. fSee Appendix, No. 12. 

JSee Appendix No. 10, 11, 12,— also No. 8. 



10 

has been, as I understand, a total failure in the requisitions made, at the 
same time, on the States of New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, <fec. 

But my son's rights are not the only rights, nor any thing like the most 
important rights, that have been violated and outraged in this affair. The 
volunteers themselves had a vested interest in the question of a commandant. 
Their far more important and interesting right of election has been violated; 
not only so, but they have been brow-beat and insulted with all the digni- 
fied insolence of unfamiliar dignity, for daring to claim the right and re- 
spectfully remonstrate against the infringement of it.* 

In conclusion, I have a word to say to the suggestion in some of the 
newspapers devoted to the support of the Administration — that the Whig 
•editors are preparing to make the President's conduct in this matter a ground 
of party attack on his Administration. 

I owe the Whig party so much good will at least, as to hope they may 
fall into no such mistake in party-tactics. 

Midst the whirl and din of events deeply affecting, for good or for ill, 
the present and prospective condition of our own and of other countries, and 
presenting to the anxious eye of the philosophic statesman a long and dim 
perspective of startling revolutions in the moral and political systems of two 
nations, how few are the persons to be found willing to turn their gaze from 
these phenomena, and inquire into complaints of injustice perpetrated on 
private individuals by the hands elected and commissioned to work the vast 
and complicated machine by which new ideas of illimitable vastness are to 
be worked out. 1 must say, the attempt seems to me quite hopeless of im- 
portant results, even in the hands of men gifted with the highest powers of 
forcible nnd persuasive eloquence. But for myself, signal failure in such 
an attempt would be certain, and I might rejoice if I escaped general ridi- 
cule. For, whatever reputation, (circumscribed indeed within very narrow 
limits,) I may have acquired for powers to convince or to persuade the 
minds or hearts of men, it has ever rested on oral and extemporaneous ex- 
position alone. Not gifted with a natural style, I have never studied or 
practised to acquire a cultivated one. Whenever forced to draw out my 
ideas systematically in written composition, it has ever been with extreme 
reluctance, and with far more fear and trembling for my poor little reputa- 
tion, than when put to the most trying tasks of extempoj-e speaking. 

My friends-, therefore, of both sides in politics, may be sure I would not 
commit myself, [a form of expression which, notwithstanding my general 
ignorance of style, I know to be barbarous,] by any printed address to the 
public for the price of a thousand votes on any political question. 

I beg them, therefore, to believe that I have forced myself into this vin- 
dication of the rights of my son, and of his late comrades in the battalion, 
for the single and sole purpose of vindication; and for that purpose, the 
limited number of readers expected to take an interest in the subject, must 
foe content with the style of a bill in chancery. 

I witnessed a poor spirited and malignant design, to which even a father's 
band was trepanned to minister unconsciously, to mortify the high-toned 
feeling, and slur the character of a high spirited, ardent, enthusiastic, and 
confiding young man, by throwing him into a position the most silly and re- 

*See appeadix No. 12. 



11 

diculons: as if he had foolishly assumed upon himself, without any sort of 
warrant, llie authority to raise a volunteer battalion; and, after raising it 
with vast labor and cost, had been unceremoniously thrust aside as an imper- 
tinent meddler and intruder, and the conmiand of the battalion passed over 
to a gentleman who had all the time stood by as a passive spectator of exer- 
tions, labors, and sacrifices, toward which he stirred not a finger, till the 
time came for him to stretch out his hand and receive the reward of another's 
paiPiS. When I beheld the overwhelming power and influence of an Sd- 
ministratioii thrown against a private individual, and ignobly directed to 
the petty ends of crushing him under the weight, it would have been rank 
cowardice, if from a selfish reluctance to expose my deficiencies in the pow- 
ers and accomplishments requisite to bring out the case with appropriate 
clearness and force, I had shrunk from still more fearful odds than I have 
How to encounter. 

1 know — no one knows better — with what impregnable barriers of polit- 
ical interests the man, whose motives and conduct are in question, is de- 
fended against peril to his political station, from shabby and dishonorable 
■conduct to individuals: I know, too, how absolutely impassive is the private 
conscience — the possession of office with all its power and patronage being se- 
cure: but let it not be imagined that absolute impunity necessarily follows: 
there is a sort of secondary conscience to deal out some share of the ven- 
geance that belongs to the true conscience; there is no bosom so obtuse that 
must not, in ihe midst of all earthly splendor and glory, blench with secret 
shame and bitterness, when conscious that even one solitary man of honor 
is witness lo its falsehood and meanness: in this case the appalling con- 
sciousness that there are hundreds of such witnesses is not to be got rid of. 

AV. JONES. 

Washington , 27th June, 1847. 



[Note. These sheets have been kept back since they were put in press to see if any expla- 
nation of the President's conduct and motives were to be vouchsafed from the fountain head, 
r^o .such condescension being now to be reasonably expected, we must be content with the case 
as we find it.] 



[Note. — The letter, with which the following correspondence begins, 
was written on the day when the determination to give the command of the 
battalion to Capt. Hughes first escaped from the deep recesses of official bo- 
soms where it had lain hid in impenetrable mystery, though both they who 
gave ihe command, and he who received the gift, now agree in saying, that 
it had been long before preconcerted and pre-arranged between ihem, and kept 
a profound secret on both sides. This, also, be it remembered, was the very 
day succeeding that when Capt. Degges and his officers had their interview 
with the President; the actual result of which was to impress on their minds 
the firmest persuasion that the unanimous and most earnest wishes of them- 
selves, and of every officer and man in the three companies of volunteers, 
were to be gratified by the appointment of their chosen Lieutenant Colonel, 
Charles Lee Jones.] 

Tuesday, 8th June, 1847, 

Sir: If the affair has not gone quite beyond the point of reconsideration, 
I have very strong reasons for suggesting the propriety of suspending for a 
day or two the appoinUTient now contemplated of a Lieutenant Colonel of 
the battalion, for the raising of which you were pleased to request my co- 
operation. 

I will not absolutely believe, till all possible doubt is compelled to yield 
to more positive demonstration, that the President had fully considered, or 
indeed was entirely aware and conscious of, all the facts and circumstances 
that oppose the appointment in question, upon grounds no less of public 
expediency than of individual justice and good faiih. 

If encouraged by any intimation that the question is still open for inquiry 
and deliberation, 1 will, in course of to-morrow or next day, collate and lay 
before the President such an array of these facts and circumstances, as I 
sincerely hope, for the honor of the Government, may present invincible 
objections to the carrying out what are understood to be his present inten- 
tions as to the disposal of the command in question. 

If it may please you, sir, to apprise me in course of to-day, or early to- 
morrow, whether the question may be treated as yet fully open to inquiry 
and deliberation, I shall esteem it a favor, and remain, with respect, 
Your obedient servant, 

WALTER JONES. 

To the Secretary of War, <fcc , ^c. 



13 

Washington, June 9th, 1847. 

Sir: I have just received your letter of yesterday, in relation to the com- 
mandant of the hadalion to be organized by the companies of volunteers 
from this District and two from Maryland, (if they shall be so organized.) 
The President had preliy much settled in his own mind, in case the com- 
panies should be raised and organized into a battalion, as to ihe person to 
whom he would offer the command of it; but as the companies are not all 
raised, nor the battalion organized, no one has yet been commissioned as 
commanding officer of it, and he may be induced to change it for good and 
sufficient reasons. 

Your views upon that subject, if soon presented, will be received and 
duly considered. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

W. L. MAROY, Sec'y of War. 

Maj. Gen. W. Jones, 

Washitigton City. 



Washington, \bth June, 1847. 

Sir: Your letter of the 9th inst., in answer to mine of the preceding day^ 
duly apprised me of the condescension with which ray views on the subject 
of the command of the battalion would be received and considered, if soon 
presented. I should have instandy submitted such views to the President's 
consideration, had I not, in the mean time, received strong intimations of 
certain circumstances of which I had before no precise information, and 
which, if verified on inquiry, must essentially modify both the terms and 
the purpose of my intended appeal to the great principles of honest and 
wise administration which, as I conceived, stood opposed to the then un- 
derstood intentions of the President as to the disposal of the command of 
the battalion. I therefore postponed further correspondence on the subject 
till the existence of the circumstances alluded to could be more certainly 
identified; and they are now identified beyond question. 

When 1 wrote you my letter on the 8th inst., I had just learned that 
^' the President had (as you say in your answer to that letter) pretty much 
settled in his own mind, in case the companies should be raised and organ- 
ized into a battalion, as to the person to whom he would offer the command 
of it;" namely, Capt. Hughes of the Topographical Engineers. 

When this mere approximation, as it seemed, to a conclusion which was 
to set aside my son, and transfer the command of the battalion to another, 
was first announced to me, I presumed, without the least hesitation, that it 
was the pure result of second thoughts, and of recently conceived views of 
expediency, which 1 hoped the President might be induced, in all candor, 
to abandon, when the indignity and injustice towards others, which such a 
procedure inferred, came to be more distinctly presented to his mind. 

There were circumstances enough in the case to astonish me at the incli- 
nation of the Executive mind, even in the conditional or indeterminate form 
in which it was first announced to me. But two days had not passed be- 



14 

fore I was put upon an inquiry, which has resulted in a demonstration that 
the state and condition of ihe Executive mind on the subject varied , in some 
very important particulars, both from the unofficial report of it which had 
been communicated to me, and from the official representation of it in your 
letter. 

Now I learn, from most indubitable sources of information, the President's 
declared resolution, that, under no possible state of circumstances, can he 
be induced to give the command of the battalion to my son. 

From this it might be inferred, prima facie, that some facts had recently 
come to his knowledge, or that some disparaging representatiotis had been 
made to him, which had changed his original intention in the mailer. 

But this hypothesis is met and repelled by equally well authenticated de- 
clarations of your own; namely ,. that the President's determination from the 
beginning was against giving my son the command, and in favor of giving 
it to Captain Hughes; to whom, in fact, it had been originally ofTered — 
when the design of organizing the battalion was first formed two months 
ago. 

These intimations of the predetermined and fixed resolves of the Execu- 
tive mind sufficiently warned me that the original design and object of the 
representations and remonstrances which I had projected, should be now 
considered as having been met and repelled at the thteshhold, and that to 
persist longer in entertaining any such hope as I had expre.-=sed in ray letter 
— any hope anchored in Executive faith and honor — would amount to the 
folly of hoping when reason should despair. 

The very positive and unqualified terms in which the existence of any 
intention, at any time, or under any circumstances, to give him the com- 
mand of the battalion, and consequently of any sort of right or authority in 
him to expect such command in any possible contingency, is now abnegated 
and disavowed by Mr. President Polk and yourself, may expose him to di- 
vers imputations bearing a formidable aspect, when the grave and reverend 
authority on which they rest is considered. And to no imputation, infer- 
ring less of ridicule and disgrace, than the folly and presumption of hav- 
ing originally usurped, without color of right, the character and authority 
of designated commandant of the battalion; and, by means of such usurpa- 
tion, having enrolled more (han 200 volunteers: folly and presumption so 
much the more gross and flagrant, as vast sacrifices of time, labor, and mo- 
ney were devoted by him to that object. 

I, too, am laid open to the suspicion of having, in a manner, abused the 
trust reposed in me, when my co-operation in raising the battalion was in- 
voked by the Government ; for I openly countenanced, and unequivocally 
adopted, my son's pretensions to the character and authority assumed by 
him, and encouraged volunteers to enrol themselves under him. 

If, in all this, I am supposed to have countenanced and abetted aa 
usurped authority, one thing is ptoved to you beyond all question, and is a 
matter of the utmost notoriety in this community ; namely, that I coimte- 
nanced and abetted the most efficient means for fulfilling your proposed end 
of raising the companies; and that to such means you owe every man en- 
rolled in them. In truth, I know not but there may be found other and 
more illustrious accessories, besides myself, participant of the offence of 



15 

countenancing and abetting this sort of usurpation. Mr. President Polk 
and yourself, mayhap, stand in that danger; since, by taking and appro- 
priating to yourselves all the volunteers enrolled by means of the usurpation 
charged on my son, you reap and enjoy all the fruits of such usurpation. 
Admit the relative positions which you assume for yourselves, and assign to 
him, and the analogy to the thief and the receiver of stolen goods seems not 
too remote. 

Again, the unflagging zeal, industry , and perseverance with which my 
son prosecuted his scheme of raising the battalion, and the extent of the 
sacrifices thereby incurred, all attest the sincerity, at least, with which both 
he and myself trusted to the security of the position assimied by him. Then 
the world is to learn at this time of day, (vt^ith what astonishment 'tis not 
for me to say,) that both he and myself are liable to such stupid mistakes — 
resulting from such intellectual blindness to the true import of facts and evi- 
dence before our eyes, as the abnegations and disavowals of Mr. President 
Polk and yourself seem to imply. 

Now, sir, I ask you lo go with me in a dispassionate review of the actual 
facts and circumstances under which my son, with my full concurrence, 
assumed (he position of commandant of the battalion. But I ask not this 
with any such view as was contemplated when I first proposed to call your 
attention to the subject. I am not now seeking to reclaim the command of 
the battalion for my son, clearly as I see and strongly as I feel the injustice 
of depriving him of it, and far more the disparaging ends and aims which 
the discourteous manner and circumstances of that act betray. If I were 
now to ask you to withdraw from Capt. Hughes and return to my son, I 
should find the horns of a very amorphous sort of dilemma thrust forward. 
Both gentlemen have derived from the same pure and illustrious source un- 
deniable, but absolutely repugnant, claims to the very same thing: on the 
one, the command is said to have been originally bestowed in advance, 
whilst it was but a name, and depended on future contingencies to bring it 
into being; to the other, whilst the naked gift, already made or promised, 
was dissembled and concealed, the prospect of ultimately earning the same 
command is held out as an inducement for him to devote his energies and 
resources to the end of calling into existence the battahon, without which 
the promised command was valueless and nugatory. Thus is created a 
positive obligation to bestow upon both what cannot possibly be taken but 
by one. In such a dilemma I could not hope for any success in an attempt 
to establish my son's claim against that of Capt. Hughes, unless I could 
undertake to prove that consistency and honor would be far more outraged 
by taking back from Capt. Hughes what, but for my son's exertions, would 
have been a barren gift, than by taking from my son the hard-earned re- 
ward of those exertions. But as I cannot, with safety to my own consis- 
tency and honor, undertake to maintain the claim upon such principles, I 
must be content to forego it entirely. 

But the following statement may convey to you some notion of another 
debt of justice which may yet be paid without danger from the horns of the 
amorphous beast that blocks our path in the other direction . Let us suppose 
that a refuge for official consciences may be found in the honest conviction?; 
of Mr. President Polk and yourself, that an unforeseen and unlucky combin?k- 



16 

tion of circumstances, without blame to either of you, had led to a total mis- 
understanding of the President's genuine inlentions, latent or patent, when 
he was understood to have thrown out inducements to my son to raise the 
battalion, or three-fifths of it, with the command of it in expectancy upon 
the event of his performing that meritorious service. Still methinks you 
cannot fail to see how imperative is the duty of giving an unequivocal ac- 
knowledgment that the circumstances then apparent (Md , ptima facie , war- 
rant the conclusion on which he acted; without any possible means on his 
part of detecting the latent fallacy, if any such there were, in the premises 
from which he drew his conclusion. 

I will carry this statement back to certain antecedents, having necessary 
connection with the matter in hand, as showing how clearly my son was 
justified in concluding that he had long been considered by the Government 
as worthy of such a command, and in expecting that, whenever an opening 
should be presented for raising a volunteer battalion in this District, the 
Government would offer him an opportunity of raising it, and of course give 
him the command of it when raised. 

You may recollect that in November last I waited on you in person with 
a proposition in behalf of my son for authority to raise a volunteer corps or 
battalion for service during the war, under sanction of a preliminary assu- 
rance of its being received into service as soon as raised. This proposition, 
as I found, was to be laid by for consideration when the President should 
be relieved from the press of business then on hand. In (he mean time my 
^on, m a letter to Judge Mason, explained the object and plan of his pro- 
posed battalion, and requested his patronage of it, if he deemed it worthy of 
support. The mode in which that excellent man chose to recommend the 
plan was, as I understood, to hand over my son's original letter to the 
President or to yourself, with his recommendation endorsed on it. I know 
not the exact purport of that endorsement, but always understood it was de- 
cidedly favorable to the plan and to the proposer. The paper, however, 
being still on file as I presume, may explain itself. This was in due time 
followed up by renewed instances in letters addressed to yourself; your an- 
swer to which informed him that the Government did not then contemplate 
calling for additional troops of that description; but that if the state of the 
war should make a further call for volunteers necessary, his patriotic offer 
should be as favorably considered as a due regard to similar offers from other 
quarters might justify. 

He was then advised by some influential friends in Maryland to modify 
his original project of a battalion, by connecting it with the Maryland or 
Baltimore battalion then in the field, and to which two companies from this 
District were attached. The senior captain had assumed command of that 
battalion on the fall of Lt. Col. Watson at Monterey; but the Governor of 
Maryland had refused to commission him as Lt. Colonel. The modified 
proposition was to compose a new regiment of the six companies already in 
that battalion, and four others to be raised by my son in this District. 

The proposition in this form was submitted to you by Senators Crittenden 
and R. Johnson, and backed by their earnest recommendations. At that 
time the bill (afterwards passed into a law on the 11th February) for raising 
ten additional regiments, one of cavalry and nine of infantry, was pending" 



ir 

before Congress. You returned to those Senators the sameanswer; substan- 
tially, as before to my son — that the Govern nient was not'disposed to call out 
more volunteers: but you went on to add , if the bill for raising the ten regi- 
ments should pass into law, then my son should have a Lt. Colonel's com- 
mission in one of the regiments; or he might then raise a battalion and have 
it attached, under his command, to one of the regiments. Such was the 
immaterial difference of terms (utterly immaterial and indifferent to him) in 
which the two Senators respectively reported to him the substance of their 
conversation with you. 

In two days after the ten regiment bill had passed into law, my son ad- 
dressed you a letter, in which he reminded you of his former applications 
for permission to raise a volunteer battalion; expressed the same confidence 
as formerly, that it was still in his power to act efficiently in raising at least 
a battalion of very choice recruits to join any regiment to which they may 
be assigned in the organization of the new regiments now to be raised;" and 
his letter concluded with a specific application ''for a field-officer's commis- 
sion (say aeLt. Colonel) in one of the new regiments." Thus was the 
option presented, either to give him a Lt. Colonel's commission simply, or 
upon condition of his raising a battalion of choice recruits to be united with 
one of the regiments. 

This application was (as he truly said) backed by the strongest recom- 
mendations from many and eminent persons both in private and in public 
life, without distinction as to political parties; and among others, from twelve 
Senators and twenty-nine Representatives, coming from one or other of near- 
ly all the great sections of the Union, and including the prominent and lead- 
ing members of the opposite parties into which Congress was divided. 

After waiting some time for an answer, my son called on you in person, 
in order to learn the issue of his last application, and was then told that you 
had newly found a peculiar objection to it, which was grounded in some 
calculation of a ratio between the aggregate number of field-officers in the 
ten regiments, and the aggregate population of the United States; from 
which it was concluded that the population of this District was not sufficient 
to entitle it to a field-officer. 

From this conclusion it appeared that a large and influential number of 
Senators dissented; and early in March, shortly before the adjournment of 
Congress, eighteen Senators, among the most eminent and leading members 
of their body, representing all sectional interests, and all sides in politics, 
concurred in a joint letter in which they conveyed to you their decided 
opinion that a field-officer ought to be appointed from the District of Colum- 
bia in one of the ten regiments, and recommended Mr. Charles Lee Jones 
for such officer. 

His last application on the subject was about the middle of March, when, 
concluding from certain indications of affairs in Mexico, that the more recent 
progress of events might give rise to a change of the former views of the 
Executive in regard to volunteers, he waited on the President, in company 
with the Adjutant-General, and renewed his former offer of a volunteer bat- 
talion, but found that the President still entertained his former opinion 
against any addition to the volunteer force. 

Prom that time he reluctantly abandoned all hope of being gratified with 
2 



18 

ihe military employment which he had been seeking for the preceding four 
aaonths, and was dismissing (he subject from his mind, when, in the course 
©/four or five weeks afterwards (about the middle of April) the first official 
communication on the subject of the battalion now in question quite unex- 
pectedly reached him. 

The terms of that communication — the authority on which it rested — 
and its consequences, remain now to be told. 

This communication came through the Adjutant-General direct to my 
ason, substaniially to this effect: that the President had at length concluded 
t^ accept a volunteer battalion of three companies from this district, and two 
fr;<jm Maryland, under his (my son's) command as Lt. Colonel; and the 
Adjutant-General adi?ised him to set about raising the three District compa- 
Bies without delay. But he declined proceeding without being firs', enabled 
to show the volunteers invited to join his standard written and unequivocal 
assurance from the fountain head of authority that the battalion, when raised, 
would be accepted and mustered into service. In fact, several circumstances 
at that time concurred to render the attempt to raise the battalion more 
!>urthensome and difficult than it would have been some months earlier; and 
when the official requisition for the battalion came afterwards to be published 
lander my authority, genilemen most familiarly acquainted with the state of 
popular feeling here predicted its certain failure, and expressed the opinion 
fibat no individual, whatever his popularity and influence, could raise a sin- 
gle company. 

Upon being asked by the Adjutant General in what form he desired to 
feave this authority, he suggested a requisition from the War Department 
lapon myself as Major General commanding the District militia ; and, in a 
a&f ot two after, he was informed by the Adjutant General that such a re- 
cjMisition was to be made. The requisition being delayed longer than was 
irsasonably to have been expected , my son waited upon you to learn the 
reason af the delay, and was informed by you that the paper had been pre- 
ftored, and sent to the President for his approval ; that the matter was set- 
lied ^ and the requisition should be sent out as soon as approved and return- 
ed by the President. In point of fact, it turned out that the requisition 
which you referred to, and bearing date on the lyth April, had been ap- 
proved by the President, but had been lost or mislaid, so as to make it ne- 
cessary to prepare another, which was finally approved and issued under 
&ite of the 24ih April ; though still referred to in official documents as of 
tke original date of the first paper. I had been for some time absent, and 
did jjiot return till about the first of May ; but when the requisition (so call- 
ed) came from the Department, addressed lo me on the 24ih April, my son 
immediately commenced with extensive and important arrangements for 
«ar.rvyrng on the enrolment of volunteers. 

If I and my son were in error as to the primary inteniion of Government 
ibtftis matter, it was an error cornnion to us and to the country far and 
laear. It is just as notorious lo you as to me, and to the whole community, 
Sfcw? universal and iniplicit was the understanding among all classes of peo- 
ple here, in . ffice and out of office, thai the battalion, when raised, was to 
fee under his cuitutiand ; and no less so among all classes of people ni other 
parts of the country, who had given any attention to the current reports of 



19 

the matter. The credited rumor, pointing out the commandant, was simul- 
taneous and coextensive with every notice of the battalion itself. Even 
before the promulgation of any official notice of the call for the battalion — 
before the paper called a requisition was issued from your Department, pre- 
valent rumor, carrying with it general credit here and elsewhere, invariably 
connected my son's name, as the commandant, with every mention of the 
intended battalion ; and in that form the standing correspondent of a paper 
in the interest of the Administration, and who enjoyed as free access to the 
sources of official information here, as most writers of his class, transmitted 
his news of the intended battalion as early as the 23d April. 

Having alluded to the universality of the understanding that existed as 
well among persons in office as out of office, as to the person of the intended 
commandant, I say further, and say it no less upon your knowledge and 
consciousness of the fact than upon my own, that such understanding was 
universal and consentaneous among all the officials, civil and military, em- 
ployed in your immediate Department, and in the various branches of ad- 
ministration dependent on it or connected with it ; and that they acted prac- 
iically upon such understanding, in every instance when called to act at all 
in any matter concerning the battalion, which required that '\ii commandant 
should be looked to. 

Among the various illustrations of this fact that might be quoted, the re- 
cords of your Department bear witness to one unequivocal instance. 

The staff officer, who was ordered to muster into service the men volun- 
teering in the battalion, formally and technically mustered them into '^ the 
battalion of volunteers , coniinanded by Lieutenant Colonel diaries Lee 
Jones, called into the service of the United States by the President under 
the act y (fcc; and the captions to the muster rolls of all three of the com- 
panies are of that purport. The officer was careful in the customary charge 
or warning, delivered orally to the men as they were successively mustered 
in, so to specify the battalion in which they were enrolled and umstered ; 
and that form was invariably observed in every case, as late, at least, as to 
8th instant, when all intervention in the business ceased on the part both of 
myself and my son .* 

I understand from one of the volunteers who, after the announcement of 
Captain Hughes as commandant of the battalion, waited on you with some 
representations on the subject, that, when he referred to (his fact as giving 
the men some vested rights in the question of a commandant, you manifes- 
ted some displeasure, sent for Captain Tovvnsend, directed him to product* 
one of his muster rolls, and, after inspecting it, demanded of him by what 
authority he had so framed it. His answer, as reported to me, was perfect- 
ly conclusive, and ought, as I humbly think, to have been deemed entirely 
satisfactory; namely, the men had all been brought forward and offered for 
inspection and muster by Colonel Jones in person, as volunteers procured 



*NoTE. — In addition to this fact of the volunteers having been all enrolled and mustered in my 
son's name, and in a battalion described and specified as being under his command, there was an- 
other instance of official recognition no less unequivocal and notorious, namely, that, at the sugges- 
tion of tke proper officer of the Commissary Department, he actually appointed an acting 
tommissary (Lieutenant Addison) for the battalion; and the authority of the commissary a» 
appointed was recognised by the proper officers of the Department. 



20 

by him and wishing to be mustered into his battalion, the men themselves 
coming forward upon that footing and upon no other ; and as it was neces- 
sary, as Captain Townsend conceived (and, I say, most justly conceived) 
that the battalion and its commandant should be specified in the muster 
roll, he had inserted the name of Col. Jones, not doubting that he was the 
person to whom tlie command was assigned, as generally understood. 
Upon this you intimated something like a threat to break up the battalion 
and send out the companies to be assigned, either separately or together, to 
such battalions or regiments in Mexico as might be found expedient. 

In this give me leave to say, Mr. Secretary , you meditated a direct outrage 
upon bodi the legal and equitable rights of these volunteers, as I will pre- 
sently show you, and as 1 have no doubt you will admit upon calm reflec- 
tion. I wonder, however, when you were quarrelling with the official re- 
cognition of a particular commandant of the battalion, you had not gone 
one step further, and renounced the ejitire act of enrolling and mustering 
in, as resting upon no authority whatever ; since you disavow the authority 
of him who procured the act to be done, and disclaim all the essential 
terms and conditions on which the men agreed to be enrolled and muster- 
ed in. Both tlie law and the ethics of your Department must be somewhat 
peculiar, methinks. if the whole consideration — all the essential terms and 
conditions, on which one party undertakes to perform a contract — may be set 
aside as originating in error and mistake ; and yet the party be strictly held 
to all the burthensome stipulations of the contract, upon other terms and 
conditions arbitrarily imposed on him. 

If the nature of the enrolment required the battalion to be specified in 
the muster-roll, how could it be so properly specified as by naming its com- 
mandant, according to the universal rule and usage of army enlistments? 
Then what other could possibly have been so named, than he who had 
been implicitly recognised by all officially concerned in the matter as the 
commandant, and who was found acting as such, and notoriously ex- 
ercising, without question from any quarter, so many and so important 
functions incident to the position and character which he had assumed? 
As to Capt. Hughes, he took no concern or interest in the matter, and,^ 
in fact, he was never heard of, or thought of, as having any connection 
whatever with the battalion, till the announcement from you on the 8lh 
inst. of the intention to give him the appointment; an intention now said 
to have been definitively resolved and settled from the beginning, yet stu- 
diously dissembled and concealed during all th,e six weeks or more that 
my son was known to be laboring with so much zeal, activity, and efficien- 
cy in the proper business of commandant. 

Now the precise scheme, officially pronrulgated from your Department, on 
which the companies of volunteer infantry were to be enrolled, purported 
that they were to be formed into a separate battalioyi, and commanded by 
a Lieut. Colonel, to be appointed by the President from the District of 
Columbia; the battalion staff to consist of one Adjutant and one Assis- 
tant Surgeon. That proposal of the scheme lay at the foundation of the 
contract between the Government and the volunteers; and they had a right 
Xo insist on its fulfilment. 

It was equally just and expedient, either that the commandant should be 



named and known beforehand, or else that the choice of him should be left 
to the companies composing the battalion. I certainly would not have 
taken any part whatever in promoting the enrolment of volunteers without 
having the appointment of commandant fixed upon one or other of those 
bases; for I could not disguise from myself the moral responsibiHty assumed 
by me, since it was inevitable that my personal cbaracter and influence 
must operate with more or less effect in drawing out volunteers; and, be the 
effect great or small, I never would have consented to contribute one parti- 
cle to produce it, without knowing beforehand what manner of person it 
was to whose care I was inducing thoughtless men tp commit their well 
being. But looking to the single view of devising the most etiicacious 
means for accomplishing the given object, nothing was more expedient 
than to interest a competent, active, and popular leader, in the business. 
Such an one would be able to institute arrangements far more comprehen- 
sive and systematic, and to give far more concentration to all movements 
towards the organization of the battalion, than it would be possible for the 
captains of companies, by their isolated efforts, to accomplish. The neces- 
sity for the prompt action of such a leader was felt at every step of our progress 
in this very case. Whilst the companies were incomplete, and without com- 
missioned officers, no pay or subsistence could be drawn for them; and they 
were obliged to remain dependent on some one for all their comforts, and even 
for their subsistence. One of these companies is actually in that conditional 
this time; and now, twelve days after my son has been superseded, the men of 
that company are boarded on his still continuing credit and responsibility, 
and one of his houses is given up for a place of rendezvous and of lodging. 

It was no part of my duty or business as commandant of the ordinary 
militia to meddle at all in the business of raising volunteer companies or 
•battalions for service in Mexico or elsewhere; when I accepted your invi- 
tation to "co-operate in raising and organizing this force," it was purely 
optional on my part, as I presume you, equally with myself, understood at 
the time. 

In whatever degree I may be supposed to have been influenced to under- 
take the task and exert m3rself to accomplish it, by finding, as I supposed, 
that the known energy and activity of my own son was to be put in requi- 
sition as the designated commandant of the battalion, still I would have join- 
ed heart and hand with the more regular agents of Goverment in promoting 
the plan, had any other commandant, entirely approved by myself, been in- 
dicated , or had the^choice of one been secured to the companies; and such was 
my opinion of Capt. Hughes, as a gentleman and an officer, that I would have 
acted most willingly and frankly, had he been indicated as the comand- 
ant. But in reference to him, I must in candor say, that, I have the strong- 
est reasons for believing that had he, or any other officer of his class, been 
in the first instance nominated to the command, it would have operated a 
Very serious impediment to our exertions to raise the companies; and I 
doubt extremely, whether one half the men now mustered in could have 
been obtained; for the prejudice which has so extensively, and, as I think, 
vmhappily,got possession of volunteers in general, against having oflScers of 
the army set over them , is, I know, very strong here, and pervades to a very 
■great extent the minds of the companies now raised, and in tlie course 



22 

of being raised , for the proposed battalion , Whether the treatment to them, 
or to any of us who have been co-operating to advance the supposed views 
of the Administration in this matter, and to that very hmi(ed extent have 
been placed in some sort of confidential relation to it as we supposed, be 
calculated either to moHify this prejudice, or to satisfy any sense of honor, 
such as informs the breasts of honorable men, is a question which 'twere 
bootless to discuss; you have got the men into your hands, most of them 
shut up in a fort, and all to be soon transferred to camps in distant lands and 
unknown regions; as to the rest of us, we may be all safely thrown aside 
as used and unregarded instruments, whose ill-treatment would weigh not 
a feather against the political interest of the public men with whom we have 
had to do, and, of course, be no burthen on their consciences. 

Had w^e been permitted to go on to the end as we began, with the organ- 
ization of these companies, I assert, with great confidence, that all of them 
might have been raised and organized within the first month. I soon per- 
ceived, ihat some of the more narrow-minded and virulent of the political 
partisans in this city had set to work to undermine and traverse our opera- 
tions, and to bring our motives and conduct into suspicion on parly grounds. 
But I knew that, unless encouraged by Government countenance, they 
could do nothing. With the great mass of politicians of both sides my re- 
lations were those of kindness, and of unlimited confidence in all matters not 
involving political or party principle; and I trusted that the Administration 
had good sense and good feeling enough to understand how to deal with frank 
and honorable men, though political opponents, who undertook to co-operate 
with it in any matter of public concern , noi trenching upon the lines of party 
division; and would not deal in half confidences and half suspicions. For 
my own part I never stopped even to consider to what political party any of the 
officers recommended by me belonged; I knew not the political bias of any 
one of them*; and if I had taken politics into account at all, it would have 
been my choice to bring together men of all parties, and let them embrace 
as brother soldiers, and sink for the present all political disagreements in the 
one great purpose of fighting their country's battles. That glorious feature 
in the conduct and demeanor' of most of our volunteers in Mexico goes, as 
I always thought, to compensate many of the miseries of a miserable war. 
I did presume that the Administration would, in this instance at any rate, 
throw itself upon the suppoit of the braver and more generous spirits who 
constitute the mass of its political adherents; and not, as is too generally the 
case, prefer conciliating and flattering the violent or ignol)le passions of the 
intemperate or the sorclid. 

Whatever of encouragement, direct or indirect, such persons received from 
you (I use this pronoun in a collective sense) I know not; but I do know, 
that men professing to be your thorough-going partisans, and known to be 
in the habits of free intercourse with you, undertook to speak in your name, 
when they gave out not only intended appointments in the companies, but 
one appointment of Lt. Colonel, which every militaiily disposed man would 
have treated as a sort of burlesque of the oflSce, and which, if certainly an- 



' Note. — I have since ascertained that of the eight company officers commissioned on my 
recommendation, five are of the party called Democratic, and three of that called Whig. 



23 

nounced from competent authority, would at once have disbanded everj 
volunteer company, wliether complete or incomplete in its organizatioR; 
and which did, in fact, a good deal discourage enrolments for a time. 

I thought it evident that one very extraordinary procedure of your own 
originated in the unhappy bias that gives such undue influence and weight 
to partisan clubs and associations, where the rash and violent meet to gratify 
their appropriate passions, and the small intriguer for his more sordid ends, of 
which he makes ihe rash and violent the unconscious instruments. The 
particular matter to which I allude is this: after my son had been going on 
for about three weeks in the notorious and unquestioned exercise of the 
functions incident to the position of one who was to take command of the 
battalion, he happened to call on you to propose some arrangement for the 
benefit of the battalion, when you took occasion to question him about the 
grounds on which he seemed to count so cerainly on having the command 
of the battalion: the manner in which he supported and justified ihe posi- 
tion assumed by him, I need not repeat; as I have already explained tkt 
ground on which it had been assumed as a matter implicitly understood and 
settled that he was to have the command . The only grounds on which yoii 
seemed disposed to draw in question his right to consider the matter as so 
settled, was that he had held no conversation either with you or the Presi- 
dent, in whicli either had promised him the command; and, when this was 
answered by a reference to the communication of the President's intention 
which he had received through the Adjutant-General, you suggested the 
further difficulty that perhaps his officers and men might not like to serve 
under him. 

Such was the very first occasion on which you had hinted at any diffi- 
culty or objection in the matter. My son being then in the mid career of 
extensive arrangements and untiring exertions in the cause of the battalion, 
had no thought of stopping on any such hint as this, ijut determined, (as 
he told you ,) to go on as he began , and leave the responsibility on the Pres- 
ident to fulfil or set aside the pledge, express or implied, on which he had 
entered upon the business; as to the choice of the officers and men which 
you suggested, why, if the question were to be left to that, he felt just as 
sure of his commission as if he had it in his pocket. 

I felt anxious to ascertain precisely your views on the subject, and for 
that purpose called on you a day or two afterwards. I found you evidently 
anxious to get rid of the subject arid of me, and to say as little about it as 
possible; all I could collect was distinctly this, that the President did not 
consider himself as committed on the subject, and that no appointment was 
intended to be made till the companies were raised and organized. Yoa 
then apologized, on account of urgent business, for dechning to pursue the 
subject at that time; I immediately took leave, and have never had the 
honor to see you, or to renew the subject in any form, since. 

Now, sir, I desire to know more precisely the meaning of this non-com- 
mittal (to use a technical, if not a slang expression of the day) which you 
asserted for the President; what were the words from which the Adjutant 
General inferred a distinct overture to my son to raise the battalion, with the 
command of it in expectancy, and felt himself authorized to make official 
communication of that overture? Do you mean to deny that a pledge, or 



24 

commitment, as you phrase it, can be implied as distinctly as if expressed; or 
to assert tiiat nothing short of an express promise, given directly from the 
mouth of the President or yourself to my son, could authorize him to claim 
the command? 

I havp forborne, for certain reasons of delicacy, to question the Adjutant 
General about the details, and am therefore ignorant of the precise terms in 
which the President expressed himself on the occasion in question; nor do I 
think it signifies a straw in what words he chose to couch his meaning, or 
what loop-holes for small quibbling may have been left in the structure of 
his sentences. 'Tis enough for me, and equally satisfactory to the world, 
that an officer so confidential, so experienced and intelligent, so thoroughly 
versed in military usage and language as the Adjutant General, clearly un- 
derstood what was said as amounting to the overture in question, and found 
himself authorized to communicate it officially as such. 

But suppose that officer more liable to mistake in such a matter than any 
one who knows him would be willing to admit, yet his construction and 
understanding of the words, whatever they were, that fell from the Presi- 
dent's lips, has been stamped with conclusive authority by the President's 
entire acquiescence in the sense put upon his words. I need not again ad- 
vert to the publicity, the universal notoriety, of the position assumed and so 
long held, without question, by my son, and of the eneigetic and active 
measures pursued by him as holding the ostensible position of designated 
commandant of the battalion. That being seen and acquiesced in for so 
long a time, without a hint of any error or mistake, is the most absolute bar 
that either legal justice or moral justice can set up against allegations of 
mistake now. 

But there is another view of this matter that bears very hard upon my 
mind, and which I commend to your especial consideration. It now ap- 
pears, from Mr. President Polk's and your own versions of your actings and 
doings in the premises, that the absolute exclusion of my son from the com- 
mand, and the appointment of Capt. Hughes, was a matter predetermined 
and fixed from the beginning; then, sir, I desire you to remember, that not 
only has this fact been concealed, but studiously dissembled to the very last 
moment; concealed, on occasions and under circumstances, when mere 
silence was completely equivalent to denial of it. 

I will refer briefly to the several occasions on which both you and Mr, 
President Polk either studiously dissembled, or practically denied, the fact 
so positively asserted by you since, in both its aspects, of the predetermined 
exclusion of my son, and the pre-arrawged appointment of Capt. Hughes. 

1. When, after my son had been more than three weeks deeply im- 
mersed in all the burthensome details of raising and organizing the compa- 
nies, you first suggested some question of his appointment. 

Then you went no further than to deny any promise to him from the 
President or yourself; and then suggested possible doubts of the officers and 
men electing to come under his command. Now, the raising of the two 
difficulties was gross absurdity, if my son stood already condemned by pre- 
determined exclusion, and Capt. Hughes was to be brought in by pre-ar- 
ranged appointment. If such were the facts, how was it possible that the 
wilUngness of officers and men to serve under him could have any effect 
whatever on my son's appointment, either for it or against it? 



25 

2. In your conversation with me you asserted that the President was not 
committed. How not committed; if, as you all now say, the appointment 
had been offered to, and accepted by, Capt. Hughes six or seven weeks ago? 
You further said the appointment would be held open 'til the companies 
were raised and organized. How so; the appointment having been long 
before settled on Capt. Hughes? 

3. On the same day, or the day after my aforesaid call on you, three or 
four of the volunteer officers went to converse with you on the same subject. 
To them you were even more explicit; saying that the President was not 
committed to any one as to the appointment of Lt. Colonel; that it was yet 
open to competition among all aspirants; and would be disposed of, accord- 
ing to circumstances, when the companies were organized. I need not re- 
peat any reference to the discrepancy here so palpable. 

4. Mr. President Polk dissembled and concealed it to a still later period. 
Captain Degges and his subalterns called on him to pay their respects and 
take leave, the very day after his return from N. Carolina, Monday, June 
7th. Their minds being full of the subject, and anxious about it, they took 
that occasion to express fully and freely their wishes for the appointment of 
my son. The President did not for some time make any remark in reply 
to their instances; but at last, finding that they were still dwelling on the sub- 
ject, he smiled in the most aflTable manner, desired them not to make them- 
selves uneasy, and assured them tJcat all would turn out right at last. 
They, good, simple, straightforward souls, would understand this as amount- 
ing to acquiescence in their representations, and an implied assent to their 
request. They came away, accordingly, with an absolute confidence that 
the appointment was certainly to fall on their chosen commander; and their 
disappointment and astonishment were so much the greater when, on the 
very next day, it was authentically announced to them that the appointment 
had been already settled on Capt, Hughes. As to the critical accuracy of 
the construction which they put on the President's words and manner, I 
have nothing to say. But I will say this much — I should very greatly pre- 
fer to be accounted a fool for understanding the thing as they did, than to 
be the great politician so deeply skilled in the diplomacy of intercourse with 
my fellow men, as to be able to conceal my thoughts with such exquisite 
finesse as to insinuate the conclusion of their being quite the contrary of 
what they really were. 

There is one point on which the President seems to have departed in this 
case from all the maxims which he has hitherto laid dowMi as to the appoint- 
ment of officers of volunteers. In this case the companies had doubly elect- 
ed their Lt. Colonel: first, by voluntarily enrolling themselves under him 
by name; secondly, by unanimous vote. Not only has their vote been set 
aside, and their choice of a particular individual disregarded, but the funda- 
mental terms of the enrolment, as officially held out to them when they did 
enrol themselves, have been violated by the appointment, against their will, 
of an officer not from the District of Columbia, but from a place which, 
of all others, they would have eschew^ed — the army. 

If there be any thing in this prolix letter that appears to you oflfensive, 
you will do me injustice if you think it was written in a spirit of resentment, 
and with design to wound or oflTend. 



26 

The fulness of detail into which the letter goes, seemed necessary for the 
complete vindication of an individual against whom the collective power 
and influence of a Government, whose power and influence is enormous, 
has heen thrown, most unworthily as I think, for his disparagement. 

There are several points, easily separated from the mass of the connected 
matter, which strike me as calling imperatively upon the public functiona- 
ries concerned, for some apologetic explanations to clear their own skirts 
from strange implications of crooked counsel and great administrative pow- 
ers perverted to ends of little and obscure interests and passions. I have 
dwelt with some emphasis on these for the purpose of indicating the points 
on which I should be happy to receive some explanation, which might re- 
lieve my mind from feelings of aversion which it is very far from pleasura- 
ble for me to entertain. 

I have the honor to remain, sir, your obedient servant, 

WALTER JONES. 

W. L. Marcy, ESQ.., Sec^y of War, Sf'c, df^c. 
Monday, 2lst June, 1847.* 



*The foregoing letter has been purposely held back until this date, so that we might be posi- 
tively assured, as we are now assured, that Capt. Hughes had been formally invested with the 
command of the battalion beyond recall, and had actually assumed it. I was determined to fore- 
close the possibility of suspicion in any mind, that either I or my son, after a knowledge of the 
circumstances stated in the foregoing letter had been communicated to us, could now condescend 
to any course of remonstrance intended, directly or indirectly, to have the effect of restoring the 
command to the hands entitled to it, or to enter into any sort of competition with any one for it. 
No — as Capt. Hughes has won the appointment without a claim, so let him keep it without a 
rival. I sincerely hope and confidently expect that he may (?■-) far more honor to the command 
than it is possible for the hands from which he received it to hestow upon him. 



APPENDIX 

OF 

ILLUSTRATIVE DOCUMENTS. 



No. I. 



Washington, Jfov- 2Slh, 1846. 



Hon. John Y. Mason, Secretary of the Mavy. 

Dear sir: My father, as General Commanding ihe Militia of this District, has communi- 
cated to the Secretary of War the wish and desire of myself and others, within his command > 
to form a battalion of four full companies of volunteers, to enter into the service of the U. States 
immediately, during the war, unless sooner discharged. The Secretary of War is now pos- 
sessed of the scheme and prospects of this corps, and will lay the subject before the President 
as soon as some intermission of their more immediate and pressing engagements may permit. 
We have every reason to expect to raise this corps out of the best materials. But the great mass 
of those wishing to join it are so circumstanced in their private affairs, that, before interrupting 
their ordinary avocations for military organization, they desire to have some assurance of being 
called into active service as soon as they are organized, and passed the necessary inspection. I 
have conversed with the Adjutant General of the Army, and he seems very favorably inclined, 
and thinks it highly probabl<3 that the prompt organization and acceptance of such a corps may 
be deemed expedient by the President. I understand it is the opinion of most of our intelligent 
military men that the actual, and more especially the prospective, state of the war calls for a 
larger force of volunteers than is now actually called for; and that even the completion of the nine 
regiments called for in the last requisition on the States is very far from certain, but with long 
and inconvenient delay. This condition of things has stimulated the patriotic feelings of our in- 
tended volunteers here, and Induced them to hope their zeal to serve their country may be found 
acceptable, and have an early opportunity of manifesting itself in action. 

I have taken the liberty to put you in possession of these our wishes and intentions, in the 
hope that it may fall in your way, either as a member of the Cabinet, or otherwise, to counte- 
nance and advance them. 

I beg leave to add, in conclusion, that all practicable expedition in the decision of the question 
is much to be desired. The spirit for the enterprise is now alert ; and very many of the nien 
most to be desired in such a corps, and who are now ardent to join it, ai-e in such a condition 
of life that they may be compelled, in case of much delay, to devote themselves to other pursuits 
incompatible with the enterprise now contemplated by them. 

I am, with great esteem, your friend and obedient servant, 

CH. LEE JONES. 

No. 2. 

Washington, Deceniber Tth, 1846. 
Hon. W. L. Marcy, Secretary of Wen: 

Sir : Since my father had the honor of communicating to you in person the proposal, on 
behalf of myself and others, who originated it, of a volunteer corps, not less than a battalion, to 
be raised in this District, with a view to immediate service with the Army of the U. States, du- 
ring the«war, unless sooner discharged, I have waited, before troubling you again with the ap- 
plication, till I presumed you and the President had been so far relieved from the urgency of 
other and more important affairs, which then precluded your attention to it, as to admit of ita 
present consideration. 

Some general information from sources on which much reliance is placed, has induced those 
who desire to join the proposed corps to infer that the actual or imminent exigencies of the war 
may demand a more considerable force of volunteers than has yet been called for by the Gov- 
ernment ; at any rate, more than there is any certainty of having completed, organized, and 
equipped for service in lime to answer the views of the Government, and the probable exigen- 
cies of the war. This impression has stirred up an active spirit of patriotism and enterprise 
among a class of our citizens capable of supplying very choice materials for such a volunteer 
corps as we contemplate. We, of course, defer implicitly to the far better information and judg- 



28 

ment of the Government to determine whether the concUisions we have drawn, as to the wants 
of the public service, be well founded. In that case, 1 beg leave to remark, that the citizens, 
qualified to form the most valuable constituents of the corps, would like, before they encounter 
the expense and loss of time required for the organization and iraining of the corps, to be as- 
sured that, when so organized, inspected, and approved, they would be received into the public 
service during the war, unless sooner discharged. Upon receiving this assurance, I think such 
a corps as the Government might confide in would speedily enroll themselves, and proceed with 
spirit and alacrity to efficient organization. 

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, 

CH. LEE JONES. 

This was followed by another letter on the 19th, requesting speedy at- 
tention to the subject. 

No. 3. 

War Department, December 22d, 1846.. 

Sir: — In reply to your communications of the 7th and 19th instant, proposing, on behalf of 
yourself and others, to raise a volunteer corps in this District, with a view to immediate service 
with the army during the war with Mexico, I have the honor to inform you, that it is not con- 
templated at this time to call for additional troops of this description. Should the state of the 
war render further call for volunteers necessary, the Department will take pleasure in giving as 
favorable a consideration to your patriotic offer as a due regard to similar offers from other quar- 
ters may justify. • 

An unusual press of business has prevented the Department from making an earlier reply to 
your letter of the 7th instant. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

W. L. MARCY, Secretm-y of War. 

Mr. Charles Lee Jones, Washington cihj. 

No. 4. 

Washington, Feb. 13//i, 1847. 
Hon. W. L. Marcy, Secretanj of War. 

Sir: I beg leave to recall to your memory my former application to be permitted to raise a 
volunteer battalion for immediate service in Mexico, during the war. 

I do so by way of introduction lo the present application, which I have been induced, by the 
same motives that dictated the former, to lay before you, since it has been resolved by the Gov- 
ernment to dispense with all additional corps of volunteers, and trust to the new regiments author- 
ized by the recent act of Congress, as a sufficient increase of the strength of the army. 

I feel the same confidence, which I formerly expressed in relation to the volunteer battalion 
then proposed, that it is still in my power to act promptly and efficiently in raising at least a 
battalion of very choice recruits to join any regiment to which they may be assigned, in the or- 
ganization of the new regiments now to be raised. 

I am still earnestly bent on entering the service ; and I feel encouraged in my views by the 
approbation and support of so many and so eminent persons, both in public and in private life, 
that I do not hesitate to solicit your attention to the application which I have now the honor to 
submit for your consideration; and that is, for a field officer's commission (say as Lieut. Col.,) 
in one of the new regiments. 

I have the honor to be, with the highest respect, your obd't serv't, 

CH. LEE JONES. 
No. 5. 

Hon. W. L. Marct, Secretary of War. 

The undersigned beg leave to recommend to your favorable consideration the application of 
Mr. Charles Lee Jones, for a field officer's commission in one of the new regiments now being 
raised. 

Very respectfully, your obd't serv'ts, 

[Subscribed by twelve Senators and twenty-nine Representatives.] 

No. 6. 

Hon. W. L. Marct, Secretary of War. 

Sir: We think afield officer ought to be appointed from the District of Columbia, in one of 
4he ten regiments now being raised, and recommend Mr. Charles Lee Jones for such officer. 

Very respectfully, &c., 

[Subscribed by eighteen Senators.] 



29 

The originals of this and of the preceding recommendation, (now on file 
in the War Department.) shewing the names of the eminent gentlemen of 
the two Houses of Congress who subscribed the two recommendations, will 
fully bear out what I have said (page 17,) of their character and stand- 
ing; and how completely they represent all the diversities of party-politics 
and sectional interests. 

No. 7. 

War Department, Jpril 2ith, 1847. 
Sir : The President having decided to accept the services of three companies of volunteer in- 
fantry, from the District of Cohimbia, to serve during the war with Mexico, which, with two 
companies to be raised in Maryland, it is proposed to form into a separate battalion, I have the 
honor to request your co-operation in raising and organizing this force, with a view of its being 
sent to the theatre of war with the least practicable delay. 

The Adjutant General will be instructed to furnish you witli such details as are necessary to 
be observed i:. receiving vo'iintesrs into ihs service of tlvj United States. 
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

W. L. MARCY, Secretary of War. 
Major General Walter Jones, Washington, D. C. 

This communication was accompanied by one from the Adjutant General;, 
giving further details of the organization of the proposed battalion, and, 
among others, that "^the battalion will be commanded by a Lieut, Colonel;, 
to be appointed by the President from the District of Columbia." 

No. 8. 

Caption of the official muster-rolls of the three District companies; being 

an adaptation of the established form of muster-rolls in the regular service 

to the circumstances of this volunteer battalion. 

" Muster-roll of Captain [W. H. D's] company in the Washington battalion of volunteers, 
commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lee Jones, called into the service of the United 
States by the President, under the act of Congress, &c., from the 11th day of May, 1847, (date 
of this muster,) during the war, unless sooner discharged." 

In that form, and upon such terms and conditions, was every man in the 
three District companies mustered into the service of the United States^ by 
the staff officers of the United States who were ordered to that duty; and 
snch was the single and only show or pretence of title to claim them as men 
bound to military service, on the 8lh June, when it was suddenly announced 
to them that they had been induced to volunteer, and had been mustered 
and received into the service, under a fundamental mistake of the terms and 
conditions of their consent to enter the service. 

No. 9. 

Appointment by Lt. Col. Jones of H. S. Addison, 1st lieutenant of Capt» 
Degges' company, as assistant commissary for the battalion, &c. 

" Mr. Henry S. Addison will please act as commissary until such officer shall be permanently 
appointed for the three companies of volunteers from the District of Columbia, now being mus- 
tered into the service of the United States. 

(Signed) CH. LEE JONES." 

{.'Washington, JUay 12th, 1847." 

Under this appointment, and with no other authority, Lt. Addison made 
contracts on public account, which were recognised and paid at ibe Subsis- 
tence department after the companies were organized. 



30 

No. 10. 



Washington, May 21th, 1847. 

Sir: It is the unanimous wish of the officers and men in our company that they should be 
commanded by Lieut. Col. Charles Lee Jones, it having been in his name, through his influ- 
ence, and by his means, that every mdii in the company has been raised. 

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant. 



Major General Walter Jones, 

Commanding the Militia of the D. C. 

No. U 



W. H. DEGGS, Captain. 
HENRY S. ADDISON, 1st Lieut. 
R. P. DOWDEN, 2d Lieut. 



June Ith, 1847. 



To Major General Walter Jones : 

Sir : We have the honor to inform you that it is the unanimous wish of our company that 
they should be commanded by Lt. Col. Charles Lee Jones, as it lias been by his energy, influ- 
ence, and means that the company has been raised. 

I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, 

E. BARRY, Captain. 
JOSIAH CLEMENTS, 1st Lt. 

No. 12. 

[The third company, not having been yet organized, in consequence of 
their number falling short of the required complement, though they were 
all mustered into service like the others, had not yet given a formal expres- 
sion to their wishes on the choice of a Lieutenant Colonel; but soon as the 
news reached them, on the 8th June, of the very unexpected change that 
had occurred in that matter, they all assembled, (with the exception of a 
few who were out of the way,) and signed the following memorial; which 
was presented to the President by a committee of their body:] 

Tuesday, June 8lh, 1847. 
To the President of the United States: 

We, the subscribers, members of one of the three companies of volunteer infantry, constitut- 
ing the quota from this District to the battalion to be composed of those three companies and 
two others from Maryland, very respectfully represent, that the enrolment of that company 
commenced early last month, and is not yet full ; that our company was set on foot as to be 
commanded by Captain Dan Drake Henrie, but neither he, nor any officer of the company, has 
yet been comm'ssioned. 

We further represent, that the battalion in which we enrolled ourselves was officially desig- 
nated, from the commencement, as one commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lee Jones ; 
that it is now so borne, both upon our own muster-roll and upon the muster-rolls of the two compa- 
nies already commissioned, under the command of Captains Degges and Barry; that such form of 
official enrolment concurred with the original and predetermined preferences of ourselves, and, 
as we verily believe, of every officer and man in the other two companies. Nor did we ever, 
by any manner or form of contract whatever, agree to be enrolled in any corps whatsoever, but 
the particular battalion so designated as one commanded as aforesaid ; it is, therefore, with utter 
astonishment that we learn this day, for the first time, that another officer is really and in fact 
designated to command the battalion; a gentleman whose name we never before heard of in con- 
nexion with the battalion ; so far the true designation of the corps in which we intended to en- 
rol ourselves, and did in fact enrol ourselves, has been essentially varied and departed fromi. 
Without intending any objection, personal or particular, to the officer now understood to be the 
designated Lieutenant Colonel of our battalion, we say, and we doubt not every officer and man 
in the other companies are ready to declare the same, that, from the beginning of our enrohxieat 
to the present time, we looked to having united ourselves to a battalion commanded by a desig- 
nated Lieutenant Colonel, whose special designation to that command was matter of public no- 
Horiety, and recognised on the face of our own muater-roll, and who was originally, and yet is, 
preferred by us to every other. 

We therefore solemnly protest against being held, either legally or morally, bound by our en- 



31 

Tolment, if its terms be so materially varied and departed from as to set aside a commandant 
"who is peculiarly our choice; a choice officially sanctioned heretofore, and notoriously justified 
by his merits and his services to us, and to all our comrades of the battalion. We humbly 
submit, that any attempt to force us, under any pretence of our present enrolment into a differ- 
ent designation of coi-ps from that contemplated in our enrolment, would be manifest oppression 
and breach of faith. We trust and believe that no such design is entertained, and that a free 
option is to be reserved to us to leave or to adhere to the company, if the supposed plan of 
changing the commandant of the battalion be persisted in. 

In conclusion, we beg leave to represent the hardship already imposed on us in this respect; 
that we have been kept now more than a month since our enrolment commenced without pay 
or subsistence from Government, and during all that time we have been dependent on our sup- 
posed commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jones, for our comforts and subsistence. We further de- 
clare, that it is by his influence, means, and exertions, that our company has been brought to 
its present stage towards organization. 

The presentation of this memorial produced a scene at the presidential 
mansion that may suggest some curious leflections to those who have trusted 
more to the names than to the substance of things, and httle imagine how 
soon the discretionary exercise of vast power and patronage may generate 
in the professing Democrat tlie same necessity for the soothings of obsequi- 
ousness and flattery, and the same abhorrence of honest plain-speaking, as 
are supposed to inhere by right divine in princes born. The committee, 
who presented the memorial, was composed of very respectable and intelU- 
gent young men; and at the head of them was Mr. Mason Cooke, a young 
Virginian, extensively connected, both on his father's and his mother's side, 
with well known and most respectable families in Virginia. The errand of 
these young men was at first quite mistaken; it was, doubtless, taken at first 
as purely complimentary, and to pay the homage of soldiers to the com- 
mander-in-chief of (he army and navy of the United States; a branch of 
the Presidential Office now growing to a rankness that may, in no long 
time, overshadow and dwindle all the primary offspring of the Constitution; 
and stand, nevertheless, as the emblem of the most purely democratic of all 
the attributes of the Presidential Office. They were accordingly received at 
first with all the bland afiability and condescension so becoming and grace- 
ful in the reception of lieges by their liege lords. But when the memorial 
came to be read, then high-stomached indignation flashed out, and the 
young men were rated and insulted with a dignity quite as princely, and 
quite as far removed from the vulgarity usually found in upstarts, as were 
the gi'ace and graciousness of their first reception. Among other rebukes 
dealt out to them — the memorial was said to be dictatorial; and the signers 
to it were reproached with having put their names to what they had not 
read, and could not understand. Nor was this a momentary outbreak of 
indignation, but the source of abiding displeasure and bitterness in the Pres- 
idential breast; and the memorial was made the text from which unreason- 
ing, uncomplaining, and abject submission to the Presidential will was to be 
preached to young volunteers. For in a few days afterwards, when one of 
the ofiicers of another of these volunteer companies made his call at the 
Presidential mansion, Mr. President Polk took occasion to refer to the me-, 
morial with marked disapprobation, and to declare that no officer signing ' 
such a paper should ever have a commission. 

Now, 1 desire to be corrected, if wrong, in some old fashioned notions of 
common right under constitutional sanctions; and, above all , of democratic:' 



32 

or republican freedom of speech. Is not petition and remonstrance to the 
President for redress of such grievances as flow from executive measures, 
and as it is competent for the Executive to redress, just as clear and inde- 
feasible a right of the citizen, as petition and remonstrance to Co7igress9 
What is the degree in which a petition and remonstrance to the President 
must fall below a petition and remonstrance to Congress in freedom and 
plainness of speech, according to any establishedrule,either of conventional 
etiquette or of common right ? 

After critical examination and re- examination of this memorial, I can de- 
tect no word — no turn or shade of expression, that transgresses the strictest 
bounds of decorum and respect required in pet'tions to Congress; and as 
little can I comprehend what there is in it to offend the majesty either of a 
President or even of a commander-in-chief. I suspect the Emperor Napo- 
leon himself would not have treated such a remonstrance from his old guard 
more harshly than with a sportive pinch of the ear, or the jocular and 
good-humored epithet of old grumblers. 

Now if this memorial be held offensive and disrespectful, Mr. President 
Polk should, in mercy, give us to understand how humble is the guise in 
which his august person may be approached; and with what unctions of 
obsequious flattery, the irritable pride and self love of the sovereign ruler 
and the sovereign commander-in-chief should be mollified and soothed. 

If this memorial be found, either in matter or manner, deficient of the 
respect required by decorum, or even by etiquette, I should the more regret 
it, because, in truth, the language in which it is couched is, for the most 
part, my own, and it was presented with my concurrence and advice. 

I found the company collected in groups about their rendezvous, in a 
state of great excitement. They made strong appeals to me for my active 
interference in the matter, as I had been accessor}^ to their enrolment as vol- 
unteers; and especially demanded my opinion, whether their enrolment un- 
der Lieut. Col. Jones bound them to serve in a battalion to which, not he, but 
another, had been assigned to take the command. I said and did every 
thing to mollify their excitement and persuade them to take time for cooler 
reflection. I promised to consider the rightfulness of their claim to a dis- 
charge, and if found maintainable, to assert it for them in case they still de- 
sired their discharge. But I advised them to wait a few days for the result 
of some representations which I intended to send in; and in the mean time 
try the effect of a remonstrance from themselves. In this way they were 
pacified from day to day, till at last they seemed to relinquish any plan of 
active opposition, though still highly discontented. 

At that time it wanted but a word from me to have disbanded them, and 
I entertain the strongest doubts of their liability, in the then state of things, 
to military coercion. If my son had then shut up his house in which he 
h^d opened for them a place of rendezvous by day, and of lodging by night, 
Tery few indeed of them would ever afterwards have been rallied under 
the captain who afterwards obtained a commission to command them . They 
were left, however, in undisturbed possession of their accustomed rendez- 
Yous and lodgings, till their captain was enabled, in the course of a fort-' 
night, to raise the small additional number of volunteers necessary for the 
first organization of the company. 



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